The University of Maryland’s Student Government Association withdrew its proposal for a mandatory student fee to help support the university’s underfunded Office of Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct.

The withdrawal took place on Wednesday — the same day it would have gone before the Committee for Review of Student Fees, according to The Diamondback. This decision comes one month after the SGA voted in favor of the measure.

In the proposal, students at UMD would pay $17 per semester to help fund the OCRSM, which handles the school’s Title IX cases, according to a press release from Student Government Association.

“University administration has failed to meet their federal mandate,” a press release from the SGA said.

The decision came after university administration told SGA executives the bill would have been tabled if it reached the university’s president. The SGA said they would consider bringing the proposal back if they believed administration was not supporting the Title IX office, according to the website.

UMD allots $1 million every year to the OCRSM, said Katherine Swanson, UMD SGA President. The student fee would provide an additional $1 million to the office to hire new personnel to handle sexual misconduct cases, launch sexual misconduct prevention campaigns and fund operating costs, Swanson said. Swanson commented on the proposal before it was withdrawn.

UMD’s SGA originally asked for more funding for the Title IX office since the center’s creation in 2014, but the university did not provide any, Swanson said. In turn, the SGA found that the quickest solution would be to propose a student fee.

Swanson said she felt she needed to do something immediately, and the university has not admitted any fault.

“They knew about the downfalls of the office, but had just waited because we weren’t under investigation by the Department of Education,” Swanson said. “They felt that this wasn’t really a priority right now because the Department of Justice or the Department of Education weren’t investigating us.”

Swanson clarified that if the administration knows the office is underfunded and isn’t getting what it needs and the university chooses to not prioritize the issue, that sends a “pretty clear” message to her.

Students at UMD are not happy about possibly having to pay the new fee, but understand its necessity, Swanson said.

“I don’t feel students should have to be charged for this,” Swanson said. “I think it’s up to the university and the state government’s responsibility to pick up the cost of this office. I shouldn’t have to pay to be protected and secure at my own university. That’s ridiculous.”

Swanson said she hopes this will be a quick fix for OCRSM’s underfunding and will not be a long-term solution.

The majority of the proposed funds would have gone toward hiring new staff members in the OCRSM. The funds would have hired a new deputy director, two additional investigators, a prevention manager and a standing review committee coordinator, according to the SGA’s draft of the fee proposal.

UMD’s administration found money in the budget to pay for two of the new hires, Swanson said. The cost of the rest of the newly hired staff in the OCRSM and other expenses such as operating costs and sexual misconduct prevention campaigns would’ve fallen on the funds raised by the student fee.

The OCRSM saw a 39 percent increase in reports of sexual misconduct from the 2014-15 school year to the 2015-16 school year, rising from 112 to 184 reports, according to the SGAs’ draft of the fee proposal. Investigations done by the office jumped 38 percent in the same time period, from 18 to 29, per the draft.

In accordance with UMD policy, sexual misconduct cases are supposed to be investigated and resolved within 60 business days. With OCRSM’s current funding and staffing, the office was taking more than 140 business days on average to investigate, according to a press release from UMD’s SGA.

Swanson said in UMD’s campus climate survey, 15 percent of students who responded said they’d been sexually assaulted in the last year.

Catherine Carroll, director of the OCRSM and Title IX Officer at UMD, declined to comment on UMD’s mandatory Title IX fee.

Published on October 26, 2016 at 10:37 pm

Contact Kennedy: krose100@syr.edu | @KennedyRose001